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This evening has been spent in the company of some of my HEMSLEY ancestors. This was one of the branches where my family tree was looking a bit bare, but now I have added three more generations, back to my 4x great grandfather Samuel HEMSLEY.

I still have much information to add, looking at the census returns there were plenty of siblings to my direct ancestors to add, and dates of birth to check in the GRO BMD indexes.

Fortunately for me they were all from the parish of Framfield, Sussex (now in East Sussex) with the exception of my 2x great grandmother who was from Kent (possibly Tunbridge Wells). I do like it when I have several generations of ancestors for the same parish, as it makes it worthwhile investigating the parish in some depth and even buying indexes and transcriptions of the parish records if they are available.

Most of the occupations are pretty much what I would expect from my ancestors, more farmers and labourers, but there is one interesting exception, in the 1871 Henry HEMSLEY (3x great grandfather) is described as a farmer of 12 acres and beer house keeper. As a long time member of the Pub History Society, I am pleased to at last have an ancestor who was in the trade. I will definitely be paying close attention to him at some stage in the future.